The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  It was afternoon when Sir John and the others went away and Margaret, a little flown with wine, called to them and mocked them from the parlour window. July saw that she had on her very best gown, of green damask with a lace of little pearls. One of the young gentlemen called her ‘Diana’, and July wondered why the others let out such a shout of laughter, and why Meg pelted them fiercely with comfits, though she was laughing too.

  November 10

  Aske, Hatfield and Bangham went up into their room, taking with them Wat Clifton, to mull some wine and to talk. It was a chill evening and Aske slammed the shutters to, and barred them, so they were in the dark, except for the glow of a charcoal brazier, until one of the servants came back with their livery of candles. But there was light enough for Aske to begin rummaging in the elm hutch at the foot of his bed for the three horn cups rimmed with silver, a silver spoon, and a little box clasped with silver in which were spices. Hal plumped down on a stool by the wall, the guest sat on Aske’s bed, and Ned perched himself on the desk by the window and set his feet on the other stool. Presently in came Will Wall and Hatfield’s servant with the candles, and Will stuck two prickets on the branch and lit them; but the gentlemen hardly knew that the room was light now, so deep were they already in one of their everlasting disputations.

  ‘You’re wrong, Robin,’ Hatfield said.

  Aske, searching now in the hutch for the sugar, grunted, and then, because he would not let an argument go by default, sat back on his heels and gave Hatfield his whole attention.

  ‘Find me then a case, Hal,’ said he. ‘As I told you before, find me a case.’

  ‘Ask one of the Benchers,’ Clifton suggested. He always avoided unnecessary effort, though his fellows warned him that men of such a humour, and of such a build as he, run early to fat.

  Hatfield, who liked law less than music and verse, was aware that in knowledge he was no match for Aske, but he trusted in luck and said, ‘Well, and I will find a case,’ so he got up and went over to the shelf where Aske kept his books and took one down at random.

  ‘No use looking there. I’ve searched.’

  ‘Oh! but you would!’

  ‘There’s a new one. A Year Book. Thirteen Richard II. I bought it yesterday. Where a plague is it?’

  They discovered at last that Clifton was sitting on it. ‘I thought you slept on a mighty hard pallet,’ said he, giving it up without regret.

  Hatfield took the manuscript in its white sheepskin boards, remarking that Aske spent some money on books. He opened it at random, looked at the morass of closely written, fantastically abbreviated pages, and drew back like a swimmer hesitating before a dive.

  ‘Let’s get it clear. You say disclaimer by parole should be enough. No need to disclaim feofment in a court of record.’

  ‘Disclaimer by parole,’ Aske answered, ‘is enough.’

  ‘Ready to aver it,’ Clifton chanted, and they all laughed at the consecrated phrase of the Courts.

  ‘Ready to aver it,’ Aske declared, and clapped the sugar-box down on the end of the bench.

  ‘Oh! Mass!’ Hal groaned. ‘Pray for me!’ He bent over the book, complaining that ‘it was a sin that the printers should never clearly print these wicked old manuscripts for us poor lawmen!’

  He might have searched for hours or for days, but he had been right to trust in his luck.

  ‘I have it!’ he shouted. ‘Robin’s wrong.’

  ‘Am I?’ Aske’s surprise made them all laugh. ‘Read it,’ said he, but then he laid an arm across Hal’s shoulders and leaned over the book to read it for himself as Hal read it aloud.

  ‘“Et nota,”’ Hatfield intoned triumphantly. ‘“Et nota tenus; fuit par touz les justices” – it was held by all the justices, mark you,’ and he dug Aske in the ribs – ‘“que tel desagreer par parol saunz estre en court de record ne vaut riens.” Couldn’t be clearer. Disclaimer by parole is worthless.’

  Aske was bending closer over the book, and he laughed softly.

  ‘Have you read the writing in the margin? Another good lawyer thought like me and wrote it down – “Vide mirabile judicium.” And, “Here’s a marvellous judgement!” I say too.’

  The others looked at each other; Hal shrugged, Ned raised his eyebrows and Clifton groaned aloud.

  ‘Not against all the justices!’ cried Hal.

  ‘Against as many justices as you like.’

  Hal shut the book with a clap and spoke with solemnity, as if he were giving sentence.

  ‘Never, Robert Aske, did I know a man so set as you be in your own opinion. If you hold a thing, you sink your teeth in it and grip like a boar-hound.’

  ‘So do all men.’

  ‘Not all. But you do. It will get you into trouble one day.’

  December 28

  It had been a green Christmas, and on this morning Dame Margaret Lovechild gathered two small pink roses from the big bush in the north-east corner of the Cloister; she put them in an earthen pot and set it on the low wall of the Cloister, where they should catch the sun. Someone even claimed to have seen a bee, but this was not generally believed, though the Ladies inclined always towards faith rather than incredulity. Certainly after Chapter the Cloister was so nearly warm that most of them preferred it to the Parlour.

  Only the old Prioress, Dame Christabel and Dame Anne Ladyman sat within by the Parlour fire. The two Ladies who had so long been at enmity were now quite reconciled and often together in company. The Prioress dozed and nodded, muttering now and then, and feeling for her staff; when her fingers found it she would set it now on this side of her chair, now on that, and at once forget on which side she had put it.

  Christabel caught Dame Anne’s eye, and in a glance they understood each other.

  ‘Poor Lady,’ said Dame Anne with propriety, but their eyes had spoken the dread each had of the ruin time makes of defeated human nature, and the hatred each bore to the Prioress as the trophy and exemplar of that defeat. They drew their stools closer together and began to talk in low voices so as not to wake her. They spoke, not as any other of the Ladies would have spoken, of Marrick doings, or of their own families in the world, but of great matters at Court, such as had filtered through to this quiet place, and chiefly of the King’s divorce. Each of them found the subject interesting in her own way. ‘They say,’ Dame Anne whispered, ‘that this Mistress Anne is a marvellous fair lady, but also marvellous free. They say that Sir Thomas Wyatt... they say that Mr. Norris... And of her sister too... They say that the King...’ So she went on, throwing up her hands in horror and greatly enjoying herself. Dame Christabel spoke of the Cardinal’s part in it all; she doubted he was no true man; she wished the King might have honest, faithful servants to send to the Pope so that his case might be truly known. Neither listened with any attention to what the other said, but as they took turn and turn about, fairly enough, the conversation contented each.

  Once Christabel got up to toss another log on to the fire, and before she sat down she peeped through the little window that opened on the Cloister.

  ‘The Ladies are all sitting with their hands tucked into their sleeves, and I swear that they are rubbing their fingers to warm them.’

  ‘And each telling other,’ said Dame Anne, ‘how warm and pleasant the day.’

  ‘I heard two of them tell the rest that to-day is the Fourth Day of Christmas. “Jesu!” said they, “just think of it, the Fourth Day of Christmas, and here we sit out in the sun!”’

  ‘They are very simple,’ said Dame Anne.

  In the afternoon the sun went in behind what had been light flecks of cloud, fine and white as lambs’ wool, but now had thickened and darkened into a muddy brown curtain hung across all the western half of the sky. It was time for the Ladies to leave the Cloister and come into the Frater, which was warmed by braziers and decked with holly and bay, box and ivy, like any lord’s Hall. And they danced there to the rebek and flute of the minstrels who had been hired from Richmond. When they had danced enough
they sang songs and carols of God, of Adam, of Our Lady and the little Christ.

  *

  That same afternoon Julian was shaking out and brushing Meg’s clothes that lay in the great chest in her sister’s bed-chamber. There were sleeves lined with fur or embroidered all over with little flowers, bees, butterflies, and running stags; there were coats of velvet; there were petticoats of damask and tinsel satin. July laid all out on the bed, lingering over them, touching them with her fingers, loving and wishing for them.

  She had one hand on a white damask gown when she heard Master Cheyne’s voice in the room beyond; at that she snatched her hand back and skipped away from the bed, and stood listening.

  Master Cheyne was not shouting at her but at Meg and at Sir John Bulmer. He must, July supposed, at last have caught them kissing.

  That did not make it much better, so great a terror to her was Master Cheyne. If it was Meg and Sir John now, it would be July after, and his temper would be sharpened because they had angered him. ‘O! O! O!’ she whispered under her breath.

  Now Sir John was shouting as well as Master Cheyne. There was a crash as if someone had overturned the big carved chair by the hearth. Then feet pounded heavily, and a door slammed.

  After a long minute the door of the bed-chamber opened. Meg came in, shut the door, leaned against it and began to laugh.

  ‘Jesu Mercy!’ she cried, ‘I shall die of laughing. He has thrown him clean downstairs. I doubt not he has broken a leg at least. They are picking him up now.’

  ‘Downstairs!’ July gaped. It did not seem strange, though it was terrible, that the terrifying Master Cheyne had thrown Sir John Bulmer down the stairs. It did seem strange, however, that Margaret should laugh.

  ‘Aye. And then out of the house and away, before any of our knaves could be after him. I knew not Jack Bulmer could be so quick. Oh! I love him for it.’

  July understood then, yet she could not laugh. ‘But, Meg,’ she whispered, ‘what will he do to us – after.’ The thought of Cheyne’s hoarded malice made her shrink.

  Meg tossed her head and laughed again, so that July saw her white teeth in her red, open mouth. She was laughing like a fishwife, yet whatever she did she was beautiful.

  ‘He may do what he will,’ she cried. ‘This has paid for all.’

  January 4

  Robert Aske came out of the Monks’ Church at Westminster. Mass was just over, and he was bidden to dinner with them by Dom Richard Pickering, who was a Yorkshireman and a friend of his father’s. Dom Richard had told him to wait outside the Church, for he himself must to-day give the great dole to the poor, which was given every day during the Christmas Feast.

  So Aske stood in the rare winter sunshine in the empty Court, feeling clean within, and happy and rich, since those things which he had heard at Mass he believed, and was possessed of. Yet, for all that, he did not know exactly what it was that he possessed, but prized it as a man who keeps a treasure in a locked box that he has never opened, because he has never needed to open it.

  Dom Richard came out from the Cellarer’s door, and servants with him, bearing the dole; he was eating an orange and he rolled in his walk, an immensely fat man, whose bulk the Abbey’s moderate fasts could not at all reduce.

  Just then the porter opened the gate, and in came the crowd of poor folk who had waited outside. In a minute the Court was full. Dom Richard and the servants were surrounded, and even Aske was pushed this way and that by the poor wretches – cripples and blind, hungry, dirty and foul-smelling – they were all about him.

  When the crowd was in he found himself shoulder to shoulder with a tall, thin man in a shabby scholar’s or priest’s gown; marvellous thin he was, unshaved, with deep harsh lines running down on either side of his huge mouth and bony nose.

  Aske’s hand had been in his purse already, and now something in the man’s look moved him to hold out a silver mark. ‘Take an alms, Master Scholar,’ he said.

  The man turned, stared at him, shook his head fiercely, and rather struck than pushed Aske’s hand away. Then he wrenched round and slunk away into the crowd.

  Aske lost sight of him; but when Dom Richard came back, wiping his hands and then his brow with the edge of his sleeve, he asked, – ‘D’you know the tall, thin fellow that looks like a scholar, Father, thin as a maypole and hungry-looking as a tinker’s cur?’

  Dom Richard remembered him well, since he came often to the dole, but knew nothing of him.

  ‘And I remember him,’ said Aske, ‘or think I do, yet cannot think how.’

  ‘Well, to dinner, to dinner,’ the monk said, and as they went back into the Cloister he cried, ‘Mass! where is my orange? I must have dropped it.’ But hearing the trumpets blow he forgot about the orange. ‘St. Joseph! there goes the boar’s head and the brawn!’

  The Chronicle is broken to speak of Gilbert Dawe, Priest.

  Gilbert Dawe, Priest

  The name of the man whose face Aske half remembered was Gib Dawe, and he was the fifth son of Mat Dawe, the Marrick Manor Carter. Of those five boys he was the only one that lived beyond eight years old, so Mat was very angry, and Gib got many a beating, when he began to steal away from the village and down to the Priory to learn his letters from the Nuns’ old priest, who, in those days, was not so old, so deaf nor so stupid as he grew to be later.

  Before that time came the boy had learnt all he could teach, and being of a sharp and impatient temper he began to grow discontented, and scornful of the old priest. His father had given up beating him; the lad was grown too big for that, and besides Mat could see that he would never shape for a carter. But neither would he, if he continued by turns so pert and so surly with his betters, get his clerk-hood; and so he told Gib often, and as often got saucy replies.

  It was a better chance than Gib deserved that he ever was priested. The Archbishop of York came to Marrick Priory to make his visitation of the Nuns. He had brought two clerks with him, but one slipped on a slimy stone and put his thumb out, and the other was busy with the Archbishop’s Injunctions to the Houses of Religious which he had lately visited. So Gib was sent for to write letters for the Archbishop. The work kept him at the full stretch both of his penmanship and latinity, and therefore happy, and because happy, well-mannered and serviceable. The Archbishop took such a liking to the long lad with his bright, eager eyes, that when he left, to the wonder of all the village and of Gib’s family in especial, he took Gib with him, to be a clerk in his household, and to get his priesthood.

  Gib did not come home to Marrick till just after he had been made priest. By that time the Archbishop thought less well of him. Able he was, but never at peace with his fellows, nor for long civil to his betters. Therefore instead of keeping Gib in his household he offered to set him to serve, with two other priests, St. Mary’s Church at Richmond.

  So Gib came home after great perturbation of soul, for the priesting had raised him to the height of heaven, and the Archbishop’s malice (so he thought it) had flung him down headlong. It was May when he came home, and he stayed till hay-time in a summer when the weather was the fairest that could be. Gib helped with the mowing, but always a little apart from the other young people, for they, both men and maids, sheered off from him, excepting only one maid, the Miller’s third girl, Joan. She, at first for kindness, and after for the stir and unquietness of her heart which drew her to him, would pause in her raking to speak, or sit near him in the noonday rest under the trees, or linger with him in the evening when everyone went slowly home from the hay fields. One evening they lingered longer than ever before – so long that the late twilight came down on them, and the dark with bright stars but no moon.

  Gib, when he woke next morning to the grey light before dawn, and felt his arm stiff under the weight of her head, knew that the pillars of Heaven had failed, and that he lay broken in the ruins. That very day, before noon, he had fled from Marrick, as a man flees from a pestilence which yet he is aware of bearing within him.

  Late i
n the next January Joan the Miller’s girl knocked at the door of the Priest’s House at Richmond. It was not that her father would have refused to keep her, though with hard words in plenty, but that she had loved Gib so well, and was (so he came to feel it) of a blind and mulish constancy. So again Gib fled, taking with him the unhappy partner in his sin, and, in her body, its fruit.

  They went South; no one at home in the Dale knew where, and few would have cared to know.

  1529

  Further of January 4

  Gib Dawe passed out under the gate of the Abbey of Westminster with a cheat loaf, two herrings, a lump of cheese and the remains of Dom Richard’s orange, which he had picked up from the ground. He would not go empty to-day, nor cold, so mild was the air, but he was thankful for neither of these mercies. As he and the rest of the poor trailed away, some already munching their bread and cheese, rich and succulent smells tormented their empty bellies, as the Monks’ dinner was carried, to the sound of trumpets, from the kitchen to the Great Frater. Gib thought of the vast bulk of the monk who had brought out the dole; he hated him for his round paunch and for the fine rolls of fat that lapped his jowl like that of a well-fed porker. He hated Master Robin Aske too for his careless, indifferent good humour; he would not for the world that Aske should have known him for Dawe the Carter’s son of Marrick; and yet, since he well remembered the boy that he had used to see fishing in the Swale, or riding the Manor horses back from watering, he rated Aske’s forgetfulness as a kind of contempt.